Sustainable and resilient e-commerce under COVID-19 pandemic: a hybrid grey decision-making approach (2024)

Associated Data

Data Availability Statement

Abstract

E-commerce saw a paradigm shift during COVID. Consumers turned to online shopping when pandemic lockdowns caused brick-and-mortar stores to shut for extended periods. Although the pandemic drove more buyers online, it had negative impacts that affected e-commerce performance. This study assesses both positive and negative impacts and their relative significance. The findings are then used to prioritize different strategies for e-commerce development in four vibrant Middle Eastern economies: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. The study employs a hybrid approach incorporating grey analytical hierarchy process (GAHP) and grey relational analysis (GRA). The GAHP evaluates the relative significance of impacts, whereas the GRA ranks the strategies. The study is based on the responses from 36 local e-commerce specialists. The findings revealed that the supply chain disruption was a rather significant factor, and that “expanding supplier base” was a top-ranked strategy. The study suggests that increasing market share of e-commerce will necessitate the improvement of the supply chains, including the expansion of the supply base, as well as the establishment of sustainable supply chains. In addition to that, the moment has come to implement meaningful changes, such as digital transformation of supply chains, in order to fulfil customer expectations.

Keywords: E-commerce, Sustainable supply chain, Online shopping, COVID-19, Digital platforms

Introduction

Electronic commerce (or “e-commerce”) involves the buying and selling of goods and services through the Internet (Kitukutha et al. 2021). The payment for such a transaction can be performed online, eliminating the need for the seller and purchaser to meet in person. However, cash on delivery is still another alternative (Jaller and Pahwa 2020). E-commerce has grown in popularity since the emergence of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). COVID-19’s spread boosted e-commerce as a platform for business between consumers and retailers and between enterprises (Myovella et al. 2020). People turned to online shopping since they were unable to leave their homes due to restrictions (Yuan et al. 2021). This made people keen to try new online shopping options for essential and non-essential goods. E-commerce platforms, on the other hand, delivered products and services to consumers’ doorsteps; sites that offered non-essentials before the pandemic began selling food, masks, sanitizers, and other essentials. (Ali Taha et al. 2021).

The growth of the e-commerce after the pandemic has been phenomenal. According to research conducted by Nint, Inc., sales in Japan’s three largest e-commerce marketplaces (Rakuten, Amazon, and Yahoo) grew by 7% in January, 13% in February, and 14% in March 2020 compared to the same month the year before. Specifically, online sales of medical products surged significantly. While global retail sales were forecasted to fall 3% in 2020, eMarketer predicted a 28% growth in retail e-commerce sales (Hayakawa et al. 2021). According to the most recent research, COVID-19-related business restrictions have triggered a global paradigm shift toward the digital economy, which has severely impacted conventional business models while simultaneously creating possibilities through the diversification of online sales. This clearly indicates the influence of the pandemic on worldwide e-commerce revenues, putting an extra 19% sales growth for 2020 and an additional 22% sales growth to the current 9% and 12% normal anticipated sales growth rates, respectively. Aside from providing secure shopping and access to critical supplies during COVID-19 shutdown, e-commerce is also recognized for benefiting farmers by building block chain technology, which allows them to sell their products directly to wholesale purchasers, bypassing intermediaries. This has aided farmers’ financial growth while also decreasing waste (Galhotra and Dewan 2020).

In addition to its positive effects, COVID-19 had detrimental impacts on e-commerce. The pandemic adversely influenced e-commerce in a number of locations, including America, Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world. In Europe, the most instances were documented in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and China, whereas in Asia, the most cases were recorded in China. Alibaba, China’s largest supplier of e-commerce services, battled to sustain growth rates in its domestic market while dealing with the unpredictability of coronavirus. Amazon.com, Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Qoo10 Pte. Ltd., Walmart Inc., eBay Inc., JD.com, Rakuten Group, and Shopify are among the major corporations affected by the market. Amazon, for example, made significant investments in a 1-day shipment that has yet to be repaid (Abdelrhim and Elsayed 2020). The lockdown had a significant impact on manufacturing, transportation, and distribution, resulting in unclear supply chain concerns for the e-commerce business. This impacted a wide range of firms, including older retailers such as Walmart, which saw a decrease in informal buying, shocks, and an increase in the purchase of essential necessities, food, basic toiletries, and other items. Other online firms found it extremely difficult to sell their items online and encountered significant difficulties while getting their products from China (Moosavi et al. 2022).

Despite the negative impacts, e-commerce has a bright future ahead of it. Traditional trade shares have become volatile and in sharp decline; this will be a powerful motivator for these traditional market traders to transfer to online trading to save the remainder of their shares and keep their commercial field and market success. To succeed in the post-pandemic era, e-commerce must adopt competitive strategies that make digital platforms resilient and sustainable. Numerous such measures to enhance resilience and sustainability in e-commerce have been documented in the literature. These measures should be prioritized depending on their ability to establish resilient and sustainable e-commerce after COVID-19. Before continuing with the prioritization process, it is necessary to understand the significance of the different COVID-19 impacts on e-commerce. The efficient way of comprehending the significance of the impacts is to quantify them. However, most studies have merely identified those impacts; studies that assess the relative importance of these impacts in the adoption of e-commerce in the post-pandemic era are lacking. Thus, this work addresses a research need. It starts with a review of current literature to assess the impacts and potential strategies; later, it measures the relative importance of impacts; and finally, it prioritizes the competitive strategies to make e-commerce resilient and sustainable.

For the analysis, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods were employed because analyzing impacts and strategies is a complicated and multifaceted subject, and no other approaches are as effective for such a task as MCDM methods (Solangi et al. 2019). Two well-known MCMD approaches, grey analytical hierarchy process (GAHP) and grey relational analysis (GRA), were used. The study is based on the experts’ opinions, which were gathered using a couple of questionnaires. The initial questionnaire collected data for comparing impacts; this data was then processed using GAHP to obtain weights of impacts. The second questionnaire asked experts to score each strategy in relation to each impacting factor; the resulting data was utilized in GRA for prioritizing.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: “Literature review” section is the literature review, which examines relevant papers and identifies research gaps. In addition, the section explores COVID’s influence on e-commerce and post-COVID digital platform strategies. “Methodology” section describes the methodological framework, which consists of two well-known MCDM methodologies (the grey analytical hierarchy process (GAHP) and the grey relational analysis (GRA)). The GAHP quantifies the relative magnitude of various impacts, while the GRA prioritizes strategic pathways. “Case study” section presents the findings and discusses them. “Results” section is the conclusion, which summarizes the work, discusses its limitations, and makes recommendations for further research.

Literature review

E-commerce occurs when a buyer and seller make commercial transactions through the Internet. E-commerce businesses are classified into the following categories: customer-to-customer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), business-to-government (B2G), and mobile commerce (M-commerce). The terms “e-commerce” and “online shopping” are sometimes used interchangeably, although e-commerce is considerably larger than this—it encapsulates a notion for doing online business, integrating a variety of various services such as making electronic payments and booking tickets.

Three major factors driving the development of e-commerce include wider variety, lower pricing, and accessibility and convenience (Morrish 2015). More variety has been a major factor in the expansion of online buying over the last two decades. Because of almost limitless selection of brands and items to pick from, customers are not restricted by the availability of certain items in their local city or country. Goods may also be sourced and transported throughout the world. One recent study discovered that customers are becoming frustrated with e-commerce websites that provide excessive options. However, more options have almost certainly been a beneficial thing in the long run (Musaad et al. 2020).

Managing an Internet store is significantly less expensive than managing an offline, brick, and mortar shop. An online shop generally requires fewer staff because web-based management solutions enable owners to automate inventory control, whereas warehousing is not always required. As such, e-commerce companies can pass operational cost reductions on to customers by giving discounts on products and services while still maintaining their profit margin. Moreover, the increased availability of price comparison websites provides customers with better cost transparency, which typically drives customers to purchase from online shops rather of brick-and-mortar stores. E-commerce websites, unlike many conventional stores, are open 24h a day. Customers may learn about services, browse for items, and place orders at any time. This makes Internet shopping extremely simple and gives buyers more control. Furthermore, people who reside in remote areas may order from home with the press of a button, saving them the time it takes to get to a shopping center.

Methodology

Identifying the most consequential impacts and pertinent strategies is a complex endeavor requiring analysis across several dimensions (Longsheng and Shah 2022). Although there is no commonly acknowledged method to analyze such problems, most studies have used multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) strategies for a multidimensional analysis (Xu et al. 2019b; Jiskani et al. 2020; Muhammad et al. 2020; Solangi et al. 2020, 2021; Ali et al. 2021; Shah et al. 2021). The present research also used an integrated MCDM framework to evaluate impacts and prioritize measures. There are a variety of MCDM methods including Delphi, AHP (Shah et al. 2019a), data envelopment analysis (DEA) (Mohsin et al. 2018; Shah et al. 2019b), analytical network process (ANP), the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR). These methods have been extensively combined to build hybrid decision support systems. For instance, a recent study conducted by Kamranfar et al (2022) integrated DEMATEL, Delphi, and ANP to build a hybrid decision-making tool for analyzing green construction development barriers. Gheibi et al (2022) designed a hybrid decision support system based on the Gaussian model and genetic algorithm in order to examine strategies for removing cyanide contamination from drinking water systems through chlorination. Shahsavar et al (2022) designed an efficient and comprehensive decision-making framework for a green city and sustainable development goals to manage municipal plastic waste. The study modeled the bio-recovery of municipal plastic wastes using a unique integrated MCDM technique that intelligently combines Shannon Entropy, Ordered Weighted Aggregation, AHP, TOPSIS, and ELimination Et Choice Translating REality (ELECTRE) systems.

The current study integrates AHP and GRA methodologies since, among the MCDM approaches, they are the ones that are the most appropriate for the problem at hand and also the ones that are the simplest and most efficient (Jiskani et al. 2021b). The research integrates grey system theory with the proposed models for coping with ambiguity and uncertainty in decision-making. The theory is determined to be the most effective in removing ambiguity and uncertainty from the data (Zhuo et al. 2020). As a result, the models are better equipped to handle the ambiguity included in the experts’ comments.

Figure1 displays the study’s research framework, which involves three steps. In the first step, a thorough literature analysis is conducted to examine the impact of COVID-19 on e-commerce. Grey AHP is then used to analyze and quantify the relative significance of the impacts. In the final step, GRA is used to prioritize strategies based on their success in the development and smooth operation of e-commerce in normal days, as well as to adequately prepare for potential emergencies. The subsections that follow offer a brief description of the methodologies, which include computational steps used in the study.

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See Also

COVID-19 and Mental HealthHealth News and Articles – Health Care News and Insights | bcbs.comThe Impact of Covid-19 on Small Business Owners: Evidence of Early-Stage Losses from the April 2020 Current Population SurveyHow Covid-19 Changed International Business | City National Bank

Fig. 1

Hybrid research framework

Case study

The vibrant metropolis that emerged from the Gulf’s deserts in recent decades are now significant global hubs for investment and innovation. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait are now among wealthiest countries with highest GDP per capita in the world. And, as government and the private sector actors continue to invest in startups, and emerging technologies with the potential to stimulate economies and transform society, the Middle East is resolved to be a role model of business rather than a follower (Wilson 2021). When COVID-19 began to have an impact on global markets, it became apparent that it would put the endurance and effectiveness of the Middle East’s rapidly growing e-commerce sector to the test (Charbel et al. 2020). This is notably true in the four main markets of the research, which are the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Qatar, and Kuwait.

Despite making up only 2% of the region’s retail industry, e-commerce increased from $4.2 billion in 2015 to $8.3 billion in 2017 (Mohammed et al. 2021). This was brought on by the rapid expansion of the Internet, the introduction of 4G, and a young population that felt comfortable making transactions online. In 2020, 80% of young Arabs shopped online on a regular basis, up from 71 in 2019. Furthermore, following the pandemic, 50% of people aged 18–24 in the region are purchasing more online. Because of this, the sector was worth $22 billion to the end of year 2020. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait drove the majority of the sector’s development, accounting for 80% of the region’s entire e-commerce industry (Alkhaldi 2020; Sindakis and Aggarwal 2022). Before COVID-19, the digital sector of UAE accounted for 4.3% of national GDP. Furthermore, according to the Dubai Future Foundation, the country’s e-commerce market is anticipated to hit $62.8 billion by 2023. The industry in Saudi Arabia predicted a trade volume of $8.2 billion to the end of year 2024 (Alflayyeh et al. 2020).

COVID-19 marked a turning point in the year 2020. Global efforts to mitigate the pandemic’s impact have interrupted, modified, and reconfigured both commercial and consumer behaviors. The retail industry was among the most hurt by the global lockdowns. Footfall in the Middle East fell significantly, and border restrictions were tightened. Unfortunately, because many stores were unable to withstand such significant economic upheavals, their “closed shop” signs became “permanently closed.” This created an opportunity for e-commerce in the region, as people began purchasing items online (Salem and Nor 2020). The pandemic accelerated this anticipated increase since early reports showed that e-commerce in the region was outpacing the pandemic.

This study investigates how the pandemic influenced the e-commerce business in order to prioritize solutions to capitalize on this momentum. The report examines how the pandemic affected the development and endurance of the e-commerce landscape in these four countries. By changing consumer choices and logistical patterns, e-commerce has the ability to fundamentally transform how economies function (Alshehri et al. 2022). This tech-driven shift can create ecosystems that welcome small and local enterprises into the value chain, while the impetus of e-commerce can fuel the region’s growth. The research involved 36 industry experts, yielding some critical findings and recommendations on how e-commerce may continue to develop in the present and future landscapes.

Results

Assessment of impact and prioritization of e-commerce competitive strategies is a MCDM problem that needs consideration of both qualitative and quantitative attributes. E-commerce firms should be able to devise strategic responses to possible disruptions. In this research, an integrated GAHP and GRA methodology is applied to calculate the exact closeness of each competitive strategies with the ideal referential strategies. Also, critical attributes contributing toward e-commerce resilience have been determined.

Initially, a committee consisting of 36 experts was formed. The number of experts was divided in a way that the experts from all the countries under investigation can be participated. As such, nine experts were selected from each country totaling 36 experts. As a real-life case study, a survey is conducted with 36 evaluators as the total sample, where the participants come from four different emerging Arab e-commerce countries. The sample is further divided into three groups (i.e., junior, middle, and senior) of the e-commerce businesses. Those juniors whose experience is less than 5years are considered as junior-level managers, managers with 5–10years of experience are considered as mid-distance commuters, and the managers with more than 10years are considered as senior managers. The experts’ basic characteristics can be found in Table ​Table33.

After the experts’ panel was finalized, the hierarchical structure of the problem is constructed by using the goal, the criteria, and the alternative of the problem. In this case, there are exclusively those alternatives that are related to the aim. Thus, the hierarchical structure has two levels (see Fig.2). The first level consists of impacts (5) and the second level comprises of strategies (8). To solve the first level, GAHP was employed in which relative weights of impacts were determined.

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Fig. 2

Hierarchical structure

Having determined the structure of the problem, the next step includes the pairwise comparisons for each node of the structure thus combining them and obtaining the weights of impacting factors by using the calculation procedures given in the methodology section for the grey AHP. The combined pairwise matrices of UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar are given in Tables ​Tables4,4, ​,5,5, ​,6,6, and ​and7,7, respectively. Later, these tables are normalized by using Eqs. (6)–(8). Afterward, the final weights are obtained. Table ​Table88 shows the comparison of the weights of the impacting factors for all the four countries.

Figure3 shows ranking of countries under different impacts. It can be seen that the impact of increased online audience is greater in UAE followed respectively by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. Figure4 demonstrates the weights of each impact for different countries. In can be seen that in UAE, the highest weight of 0.224 is received by supply chain disruption, which is followed by increased online consumer demand (0.208), increased online audience (0.198), extended delivery time (0.187), and labor shortage (0.182). The results of Saudi Arabia are only slightly different than the UAE since both have similar top three impacts with similar ranking; however, in Saudi Arabia, labor shortage gets the second position while extended delivery time gets the fifth position. The ranking of impacts in Kuwait and Qatar remained the same as Saudi Arabia; however, the weightage obtained is different. For instance, weights of impacts in Kuwait were supply chain disruption (0.225), increased online consumer demand (0.219), increased online audience (0.194), labor shortage (0.182), and extended delivery time (0.18); whereas, weights obtained by factors in Qatar were supply chain disruption (0.226), increased online consumer demand (0.212), increased online audience (0.193), labor shortage (0.189), and extended delivery time (0.18).

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Fig. 3

Countries under each impact

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Fig. 4

Impacts in each country

By conducting the AHP method in a grey environment, not solely a weight and ranking of impacts for individual countries can be obtained but it can also be combined to get the collective scores of impacts in whole countries can be combined. The final results of weights that shall be used for analyzing and prioritizing the competitive strategies are shown in Fig.5. Moreover, successfully representing subjective judgements and including the bias caused by personal judgements when minimizing it during the estimation process are part of the current study.

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Fig. 5

Final weights of impacts

The weights obtained using GAHP were entered into GRA to prioritize competing strategies. A group of 12 e-commerce experts was tasked with prioritizing the strategies under consideration. These e-commerce analysts were professionals in their area, having worked in the e-commerce business for over 15years. A total of eight strategies had to be prioritized. The experts were requested to score each strategy in relation to each COVID-19 impact. The significance of strategies was graded on linguistic measures ranging from None to Very High, namely None (N), Very Low [VL], Low [L], High [H], and Very High [VH] (Al Harazi et al. 2022). The grey number sets that corresponded to the ratings were chosen. Table ​Table22 was used to transform the experts’ verbal judgments of strategies into grey numbers.

The converted input was then utilized to create the grey decision matrix depicted in Table ​Table9.9. After that, the grey decision matrix was normalized using Eq.19 to provide a grey number value ranging from 0 to 1. Table ​Table1010 displays the normalized matrix. Later, the fuzzy grade relationship coefficient was calculated, as shown in Table ​Table11.11. Table ​Table1212 shows the grey weights of the impacts that were determined using GAHP. The weighted grey decision matrix was then created by grey multiplication of GAHP weights with the appropriate values of the fuzzy grade relational coefficient matrix using Eqs. 23 and 24. Table ​Table1313 displays the weighted normalized grey decision matrix calculated values. Microsoft Excel was used to complete all computations.

The GRA method’s final results are reported in Table ​Table14.14. The following is the ranking order of the techniques based on the white grey relationship degrees: Expansion of the supply base (S-5) ≻ Integration of cutting-edge technologies (S-8) ≻ Digitalization of public and private sectors (S-1) ≻ Development of an effective risk management system (S-6) ≻ Extended payments or payments at regular intervals (S-7) ≻ Collaboration with e-vendors (S-2) ≻ Monitoring of customer preferences and tastes (S-3) ≻ Modification to regulatory frameworks (S-4).

Discussion and implications

As a result of COVID-19, people are increasingly turning to e-commerce sites to shop. More such e-commerce websites are being developed; however, more marketing efforts and novel solutions are required to capture the attention of customers in order to boost competitiveness of e-commerce in the post-pandemic age. As such, it is critical to devise and implement strategies to maintain the gains earned in the e-commerce market and to convert this influx of people into regular customers. Such strategies must address the effects of COVID-19 while also boosting e-commerce so that it does not fold under the stress of crises and can continue to operate efficiently throughout and after the pandemic. Therefore, the strategies must be assessed and prioritized in terms of their ability to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. Prior to the prioritization, it is necessary to first understand the effects of COVID on the industry and how much they influenced industry performance. As a result, the process of prioritizing strategies becomes complex and difficult. Because the impacts are multifaceted in nature, an intuitive approach may provide erroneous findings. This sort of problem is addressed by MCDA methods.

This paper presents a novel concept based on MCDA methodologies, including a hybrid approach combining GAHP and GRA, that may be used to prioritize competitive strategies for e-commerce. The approach described in this study includes a quantitative assessment of COVID-19’s impacts, which may be used to develop an evaluation mechanism for e-commerce competitive strategies. The framework can especially give e-commerce managers in emerging nations with a better grasp of how to establish resilience in e-commerce businesses. The study indicate that quantitative evaluations of COVID-19 consequences are rarely considered by e-commerce decisionmakers when developing strategies mainly due to the intricacy of the computations involved. This study emphasizes the need of conducting quantitative analyses like the ones produced with GAHP in the current study. The results indicate that the proposed framework has potentially promising applicability and appropriateness in e-commerce evaluations.

According to the findings, the most significant impact of COVID-19 on e-commerce is supply chain disruption. The second most significant consequence is shown to be “increased online demand,” which, unlike “supply chain disruption,” contributed favorably to e-commerce. The third in the sequence is “increasing online audience,” which has also benefited e-commerce. The fourth and fifth factors in the ranking are “labor shortage” and “extended delivery time,” both of which have a negative impact on e-commerce.

Now that the quantitative significance of impacts has been determined, the goal is to prioritize strategies based on their potential for minimizing negative impacts and maximizing good impacts in order to boost the resilience and effectiveness of e-commerce. The findings of the prioritization suggested that “expansion of the supply base” was the most effective strategy for boosting e-commerce in the post-pandemic era. The “integration of cutting-edge technologies” and the “digitalization of public and private sectors” are found to be the second and third most important strategies.

The e-commerce business was rapidly growing prior to COVID-19, but COVID-19 has accelerated the process and elevated the e-commerce business to new heights (Beckers et al. 2021). The supply network, on the other hand, is a whole different story, and significant upgrades are necessary (Moosavi et al. 2022). Despite the coronavirus’s spread, supply networks remain typically traditional. Suppliers have taken no measures to digitalize their operations or remotely replenish stores and small businesses (Pujawan and Bah 2022).

If emerging markets want to become global leaders in the e-commerce business, they must carefully increase their supply base by initiating trade with new foreign partners. This will not only broaden their participation in global value portfolio, but will also aid in mitigating potential challenges caused by supply chain bottlenecks (Butt 2021). Enhancing supply quantity and quality will increase competitiveness among e-commerce vendors since failing to fulfil consumer needs will result in client loss. Likewise, customers will have a plethora of alternatives in the shape of various merchants and e-commerce platforms. As a result, merchants and retailers must be primarily client focused. Furthermore, the governments of these countries should develop a thorough system of rules to act as a blueprint for supply throughout their respective countries.

Conclusion

Covid-19 prompted customers to alter their shopping habits, with many preferring to purchase online rather than in-store, particularly toward the onset of the pandemic. Even older generations, who have historically relied on in-store purchases, are increasingly resorting to Internet shopping. As people get more comfortable with the conveniences of digital purchasing, this channel is projected to become their preferred form of shopping once the pandemic has passed. Similarly, the pandemic prompted several smaller retailers to enter the market by launching their own online services. If this transition becomes the normal state of affairs, as we anticipate, now is the time to identify strategies and put the necessary structures in place to sustain it.

Despite the fact that the pandemic pushed more buyers online, it had negative consequences that severely harmed e-commerce. Thus, it is vital to consider both the positive and negative repercussions of COVID-19 while positioning competing e-commerce initiatives. This research accomplishes both; it first examines consequences and then prioritizes strategies depending on the relevance of those impacts. The study identifies and evaluates five key impacts, two positive and three negatives. Positive impacts include increased online audience and increased online consumer demand; while negative impacts include supply chain disruption, extended delivery time, and labor shortage. The findings indicated that supply chain disruption, which is a negative impact, outranked all other consequences in terms of significance. Hence, while prioritizing strategies, the supply chain was given more weight. As a result, the strategy of expansion of the supply base received the highest ranking out of the eight possible strategies. Integrating cutting-edge technology and digitalizing the public and private sectors are the second and third most highly ranked strategies, respectively.

The findings suggest that increasing market share will necessitate the improvement of the supply chains, including the expansion of the supply base, as well as the establishment of sustainable supply chains. In addition to that, the moment has come to implement meaningful change, such as digital transformation of supply chains, in order to fulfil customer expectations. The supply chain model must also contain competitive delivery alternatives, a working pricing mechanism, and novel techniques to increasing value, such as cooperative distribution channels. The progressive adoption of technology throughout the pandemic will also lead to the acceptance of newly designed solutions in the e-commerce industry. A high demand has resulted in the creation of numerous new payment methods, and effective delivery systems, including improved methods of investigating the sustainability of drone-based delivery development systems, are anticipated to emerge in the long term. The fact that there is not much of a disparity in the overall weights of the consequences is one of the limitations of the research. This is particularly true when comparing the impacts of “increased online consumer demand” and “supply chain disruption.” This seems to imply that all of the impacts are about equal in weight, but obviously some are more important than others. Moreover, the validity of this analysis is also contingent on the assumption that the changes caused by COVID-19 would continue. For instance, “increased online audience” may not be a durable or long-lasting trend.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the experts who volunteered to participate in the survey and for their informative comments, which helped to improve the analysis.

Author contribution

All of the studies, authors have contributed to it. Saleh Yahya Alwan and Yanying Hu established the original study. Yanying Hu also offered direction and oversight. Ahmed Abdulwali Mohammed Haidar Al Asbahi developed the methodological framework and obtained the results. Yaser Khaled Al Harazi and Ahmed Khaled Al Harazi revised and improved the manuscript.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Declarations

Footnotes

Contributor Information

Saleh Yahya Alwan, Email: moc.kooltuo@1111nawla_s.

Yanying Hu, Email: moc.anis@8357narix.

Ahmed Abdulwali Mohammed Haidar Al Asbahi, Email: [email protected].

Yaser Khaled Al Harazi, Email: [email protected].

Ahmed Khaled Al Harazi, Email: [email protected].

References